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ADDRESS 



AT THE 



DEDICATION 



OF THE 



Soldiers' m Sailors' Monument 



UTICA, N. Y M 



October 13, 1891. 



By J. K. H^WLEY. 



HARTFORD, COXN. : 

Pkess of The Case, Lockwood & Bkainard Company. 

1891. 



is-Hs? 



ADVANCE COPY. Not to be used until after 
the delivery — between 11 A. 31. and 1 P.M. 



ADDRESS OF J. E. HAWLEY 

AT 

THE DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS* AND SAI LOBS' 
MONUMENT, AT UTICA, N. Y. 



OCTOBER 13, 1891. 



2L\ President and Gentlemen of the Soldiers^ Monument 
Association of I tica: 

Many pleasing memories of the people and places 
of Oneida and Madison counties, and especially of this 
goodly city of Utica, led me to receive your invita- 
tion to speak upon this interesting and memorable 
occasion as a command, to be obeyed as a duty and 
honor. All old soldiers and sailors, all their families 
and friends, all lovers of the good cause and the dear 
old flag, look toward you to-day with love and grati- 
tude for your good work in raising this noble monu- 
ment to your soldiers of the Union. 

Comrades and Fellow Citizens : How wonderful 
the story is ! Sometimes we plod along in the drudgery 
of our tame and common life for weeks or months, 
the memories of the war out of mind. Suddenly, per- 
haps the sight of a maimed soldier, perhaps the roll of a 
drum, the call of a bugle, even the leisurely rustle 



of the old flag peacefully rustling, brings back in a 
tumultuous rush the recollections of that magnificent 
and awful time. 

In our previous history there had been many skir- 
mishes with Indians, the unsatisfactory but not alto- 
gether inglorious war of 1812, and a short struggle with 
Mexico; but we thought of war, — real, great, glorious, 
desperate, prolonged war, straining the full energies of 
thirty or forty millions of people and marshaling armies 
by the hundred thousand, — as something of which sub- 
stantially the last had probably been seen under Napo- 
leon. How many boys read and read of great battles, 
and wondered and wondered how it would seem ! As 
their pulses leaped at the description o( the great thun- 
derings of cannon, the rattle of musketry, the wild yelling 
cheers of the charge, they asked: — "Could I go through 
a battle:' How should I feel? How do wounded men 
look and act \ What do they say ( And the long night 
march, the bivouac on the wind-swept plain or in deep 
woods! I wish I could see it all," said many a lad. 

At half-past four on the afternoon of April 12, 1861, 
a cannon-shot of devilish malignity, speeding from Mor- 
ris Island, South Carolina, toward Fort Sumter, "slapped 
the face of Liberty." The lightning carried the news. 
Suddenly arose 7 5,1 >00 men — 300,000 — 300,000 more 
— a million on one side only of a great war! Dying 
men by the hundred thousand, blood in streams, debt by 
the thousand million, a nation's life trembling in the 
balance, black clouds of sorrow and despair covering the 
whole land ! The boys who doubted their own hearts 
forgot to ask questions. They stood up by regiments, 



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brigades, divisions, and grand armies, and t lie world 
never saw braver soldiers nor more terrible battles. It 
was an indescribable, astounding revelation of the true 
soul of a nation. 

It was the cause— the dear land we love — the Flag 
— the Declaration — the Union — the foremost Republic 
in the world's history — the grand experiment of govern- 
ment by the people — a continent dedicated to Liberty 

— a nation set apart of God to work out the great prob- 
lem of self-government, of free government, education, 
peace, justice, equal rights — good will among men — 
all leading mankind toward a future nobler than our 
richest dreams ! Should this vision of unutterable glory 
be blotted out? Should we have disunion — two repub- 
lics — a dozeu — with petty ambitious, factious, revo- 
lutions, repudiation, dishonor, anarchy — a wretched, 
crushed continent, begging for kings to take all and 
give peace? For answer the grand "Fall in!' 1 rang 
aud rolled day and night. The air quivered, hummed, 
thrilled, and shuddered with multitudinous drumming. 
By hundreds of thousands, young men, dropping all 
works and thoughts but of war, stood erect, shoulder 
to shoulder. From valleys and rocky hills, prairies and 
towns, fresh from studies and shops, grimy from mines 
aud furnaces — they came down in long swinging ranks, 
with the "clash, clang, and roll of stormy war music," to 
right the great wrong. 

The wife thanked Heaven that her husband was a 
man and a patriot. The mother asked (*od 1 s blessing 
upon her boy, and proudly and tearfully sent him away. 
The children knew they would not be ashamed of their 



fathers. It was worth a century to live in those four 
years. 

The enemies of free government looked with grim 
delight for the coming fulfillment of their prophecies. 
They said we had certainly thriven as to mere numbers. 
They said we could fight like a mob; we were the 
descendants of uneasy and rebellions colonists ; our land 
was the refuge of the enemies of all government. They 
said we had no history, no historic consciousness, no 
cohesion. They said we were only a loose congeries 
of States that would fall apart upon a quarrel, with 
no central commanding power to compel organization 
and obedience. They said we had lost faith in human 
nature; we believed all men purchasable; we wor- 
shiped the dollar ; we hungered for sensual and material 
things. They believed that no democratic nation could 
impose heavy taxes, create great debts and pay them, 
or long endure self-imposed sorrow and pain. We 
asserted that there is no power on earth equal to that of 
a free people ; that all men together know more than 
one man ; that whatever is to be done by a whole people 
can best be done by a free people. It was for us 
to show how a free people can carry on a long war, 
and to exhibit unity, submission, organization, discipline, 
obedience, perseverance, devotion, self-sacrifice, not be- 
cause a king commanded, but because we felt and 
willed it. 

The struggle was of infinite importance, because the 
failure of this Republic would have delayed the world a 
century. There is not a year or page of subsequent 
European history that is what it would have been if we 



had failed. There is no measuring the influence of this 
Republic on other nations. Our wonderful growth in 
population, social, material, and educational develop- 
ment, trade and commerce — our small standing army — 
have been making their impress on the people of 
the Old World. No graces of rhetoric can add strength 
to the statistics that prove our material prosperity, our 
elasticity, our burden-bearing and debt-paying capacity. 
Call other governments what you will, public opinion 
is rapidly coming to rule them. It will be more and 
more felt as intelligence spreads ; and intelligence and 
intellectual growth cannot be stopped. We were 
fighting the battle of the centuries. It was not for 
the North ; it was not against the South. It was 
not for the southern slave or the black man or the 
white man, nor against the slaveholders. It was for 
the North, for the South, for the slave, for the master, 
for the whole people and all people. It was the battle 
of the World and of Humanity. 

Not all men reasoned elaborately about it. That 
combination of truths and traditions, feelings, beliefs, 
intellectual and moral discovery and growth that we call 
civilization, compelled us. The common soldier felt 
it in his soul and gloried iu the drama, without waiting 
for philosophic speculations. 

The contest was worth all it cost. The world 
could not have afforded to let it end otherwise. A 
divided republic, several republics, would have meant 
eternal war. And the nation determined to end the 
question of unity then and forever. 

The day of enduring peace is far away. Conflict is 



(i 

the law of the universe. The mystery of the Divine 
Government is beyond our comprehension. Everywhere 
there are duality and strife. There are up and down, 
right and left, heat and cold, light and darkness, day 
and night. Growth and decay, good and evil, contend 
for the mastery. There is no rest. The good cannoi 
rest if it would. The bad is falsehood, selfishness, 
hatred, malignity, destruction. They are the stronger 
peoples who live where there is a well-balanced struggle 
with nature. There will be peace only when all evil 
shall have vanished. It is well said that "nothing is 
settled that is not right, 1 ' and that "unsettled questions 
have no pity for the repose of mankind. 11 

What is this terrible and inevitable thing called 
war? It is the sudden and violent disruption of all 
peaceful industries. The air becomes tremulous with the 
roll of drums, the resonant notes of bugles, and the clang; 
of bells. There come the marshaling and arming of 
myriads of men, the rumble and chuck of ponderous 
artillery and endless trains of wagons. There come the 
sundering of families, the weeping and the blessing of 
fathers, mothers, wives, and sweethearts, the high flush 
of noble emotions of pride, patriotism, and devotion. 
And again the hasty instruction, the marching and camp- 
ing under blazing suns, or in frost and snow; the delving 
in mud ; some morning the quick sharp shots of the skir- 
mish line; combats now at dawn, now in darkness; and, 
in time, the full battle array; the rattling, swelling, and 
diminishing volleys of musketry; the irregular boom of 
cannon ; the whistling, humming rifle ball : the satanic 
screech of heavy shot and shell ; tumultuous shmils and 



yells, now near, now far. There come hospitals, crowded 
by the wounds of battle, and the more deadly wounds of 
disease; populous grave-yards; the muffled drum and 
mourners going about the streets; debts, private and pub- 
lic ; rags, starvation, and cripples. 

War is an unspeakable calamity, and the wickedest 
thing in the universe is a selfish and wicked war between 
wicked rulers and peoples, unless it be a cowardly peace 
__a peace that will see justice and liberty stricken down 
and stand by silent and idle. Wrong and oppression aie 
a challenge' to Heaven and all just men. War rouses 
men to great thoughts and deeds and calls men to sacri- 
fice. Unbelief in human nature grows in peace, fostering 
'a conviction that all men are selfish. With war and 
sacrifice conies a sens, of the value of the country. Our 
soldiers learned the incalculable worth of regularity, 
fidelity, courage, cheerfulness, and the beauty of absolute 
obedience to orders because they are orders, which is 
next to doing right because it is right. Victor Hugo 
says the soldier and the priest are at heart the same : one 
is devoted to his country down here; the other to his 

country up there. 

See that young man as he enters the ranks, fresh 
from the plow, the workshop, or counting-house. It 
may be that at first his manly spirit rebels against the 
sharp, peremptory order of an officer his equal, and noth- 
ing more, at home. He shrugs his shoulder in reluctant 
obedience. He may grumble over his hard-tack and 
weary of the endless round of camp duty. But as the 
months roll on, see him salute with head erect and flash- 
ing eye. With what alacrity he springs to duty, wher- 



ever and whenever be finds it — pjrotjd now of submis- 
sion, obedience, and self-sacrifice. He lias learned to obey, 
lie is ready to do and die. And that is the lesson we 
taught two minion boys — a grand lesson to be learned, 
even amid the carnage of bloody war. Nor did it end 
there. 

There was with some a feeling of dread — born of 
the old world's history — of the time when these soldiers, 
trained in the rough routine of military camps and accus- 
tomed to deeds of blood, should be turned back upon 
society. But when the discharge came, the veterans 
quietly stepped back into the ordinary vocations of 
life, resuming its peaceful duties, all the better fitted 
because of the sacrifices they had made. Multitudes 
to-day are better citizens for having been soldiers. 

They are to be found in every field and coiner of the 
land from shore to shore, such as I see before me, in all 
employments, professions, and grades, staunch lovers of 
liberty, law, and order, worshipers of the glorious ideal 
of what this land is to be. They have spread through 
every distant territory, ever the truest and foremost 
anion'-' the founders of future Stales. 

Everywhere they stand a solid wall guarding the 
civil power So loving the country that they could die 
for it in the storm of war, they are not the men to destroy 
its institutions. 

It was a just war and no other was ever con- 
ducted like it. Read the story of great European 
campaigns, save as modified at times by special rela- 
tions and to an increasing degree by our example. 
"Fire and sword" was the cry. Desolation followed 



tile soldier — not that the enemy might be starved into 
defeat, but that the invader might divide plunder as 
a legitimate portion of his pay, and an additional motive 
for his service. The capture of cities was followed by in- 
sane orgies trampling upon order and discipline, robbery, 
nameless outrages upon the defenceless non-combatants, 
fire, and brutal murders of the defeated enemy. On the 
other hand, save where, as in the Shenandoah, or in 
Sherman's march, the subsistence of the army was 
drawn from the country, or the destruction of the 
support of the enemy was demanded by military policy, 
the army of the Union carried with it protection to prop- 
erty, protection to life and person, and the punish- 
ment of disorder. As various regions came again 
under the old Hag, the starving were freely fed from 
the army supplies, teachers and preachers opened 
churches for a gospel free to all, and the Freedmen's 
Bureau took charge of the black man, free, surely, 
yet owning nothing but himself. With the Hag went 
fair play and fair wages to all men. The Sanitary 
Commission and the Christian Commission marched 
with, or upon the heels of, the army, carrying 'bless- 
ings without reservation or distinction. Never before 
did war accompany its horrors with so much of the 
mitigations of a christian civilization. 

The political history of a few months that im- 
mediately preceded the war are instructive if not 
nattering. They were full of doubt and dread. So 
much did loyal men love peace and union, and so 
much, it must be confessed, did they doubt the great 
hearts and high courage of the loyal millions, that 

2 



10 

they offered terms of settlement which one wishes 
could be forever blotted from the record, save that 
they acquit the Slates that stood by the Union of 
the crime of desiring war. And it was long before 
the nation was driven, under the chastening hand of 
the Almighty, to lift its hand against the under- 
lying cause of its calamities, the belated barbarism, 
human slavery struggling for a permanent entrench- 
ment in the republic, and in despair striving for its 
destruction. 

But as the poet hath it : 

"Above the bayonets bloom the lilies and palms of God." 

With the restored Union came universal liberty. 
And of the terms granted our conquered brethren 
of the South, Gen. Lee said : " Gen. Grant's treat- 
ment of the Army of Southern Virginia is without 
a parallel in the history of the civilized world. 11 Con- 
fiscation ceased. There were no executions for treason. 
No ungovernable army remained to dominate the 
government and justify the prophecies of our enemies, 
nor did roving bands of guerillas harrass a wean- 
people. It was indeed a great war, and in noth- 
ing greater than in its close, and in the results that 
justify it. Its gigantic labors, sorrows, debts, and deaths 
won something, and whatever was thus won is to be pre- 
served and maintained. Upon this much we can all 
agree : 

An indissoluble union was restored. The theory of 
secession appealed to the last dread tribunal within the 
reach of man. It lost, and it is dead, as a rule of possible 
action. No man asserts to the contrary. 



11 

Universal liberty was established. Human slavery 
vanished. No man is heard to lament it, and most of 
its former champions rejoice. 

By constitution and statute, the equality of rights 
has been established, for the ballot box, the jury box, 
the witness box, and the cartridge box. There are 
mourners, but they are helpless. 

There is but one theory of political society. In 
theory, at least, there shall hereafter be no master and no 
slave ; no noble, no peasant; no dominant class, no infe- 
rior class. Every man has a right to be all that he can 
be. Even our late enemies concede all this, and most of 
it most cordially and sincerely. For it our dead brothers 
gave their lives. Failure to maintain it would be an 
infinite shame. 

One of our high duties has been thus far nobly dis- 
charged. Every dollar of the debt has been held as 
sacred as a soldier's grave. More than two thousand 
million of it has been paid. Had it been treated with 
dishonor or trifling;, there would have been lacking one 
large element in the demonstration that a free people can 
endure and govern. 

Let us all remember that "Liberty is a burden, not 
a release. 1 ' It is easier to live under a reasonable des- 
potism than in a republic. Where one man rules, it is 
the paradise of those who lament the existence of parties 
and political agitations. The American citizen has 
assumed the sovereignty and cannot escape its duties. 
All political thoughts, debates, and conflicts concern him, 
and he can never reach the end of his care. 

We have the unspeakable happiness to have lived 



12 

twenty-flix years after the close of the war, and to see 
the great changes in fundamental law and statute neces- 
sary to confirm the judgment thereof; to see our coun- 
try first in financial credit, first in the harmonious justice 
and freedom of its institutions, and soon to be first in 
numbers and wealth. No man who has contributed, 
however humbly, to this wonderful advance has lived 
altogether in vain. 

By immeasurable sacrifices in war and peace a new 
and solemn sanction has been sriven to the duties of 
citizens]]!}). Let no man trifle with the honor of the 
great Republic, or deny its authority, or corrupt its 
ballot boxes. 

We read in the Scriptures that when King David 
was encamped over against Bethlehem, which was in the 
hands of the Philistines, three of his thirty chieftains 
came down to see him. 

"And David longed, and said: 'Oh that one would give 
me to drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem which is 
by the gate ! ' 

" And the three mighty men brake through the host of 
the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem 
which is by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David ; 
nevertheless, be would not drink thereof, but poured it out 
unto the Lord. 

" And he said : ' Be it far from me, Lord, that I should 
do this ; is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy 
of their lives?' Therefore he would not drink it." 

More than three hundred thousand men went in 
jeopardy of their lives and shed their blood for the 
Republic. 

When the moralist dw< lis upon the beauty of peace 



13 

and the sin and barbarism of war, lie too often paints 
tlie soldier only as one divested of all fine, pure elements 
of humanity, going out to kill his fellow-men, and lay 
waste their homes. Such are some warriors ; such were 
not ours. Before the contest opened, and during its 
earlier years, the defenders of the Union had less of 
hatred than ever prevailed in a people going to battle. 
They longed for signs of changed conviction, or dying 
passion, and returning amity. At any moment, the news 
that our opponents had abandoned strife and stretched 
out right hands would have been received with joy inde- 
scribable and far surpassing that of the capture and en- 
forced surrender of Appomattox. It was the stroi 
brother restraining the weaker from the destruction of 
tilings of old dear to both, and the heavy hand of re- 
lentless war, more deadly to the attacking force than to 
the defenders, was really not raised in the East until the 
campaign s of 1 8C4. 

Napoleon's dictum, " The worse the man the better 
the soldier, 11 only reveals the character of his wars. He 
would have discovered that it was not alone barbarous 
in morals, but a blunder in true military science, had he 
led in such causes that a truly intelligent people could 
have daily wrestled in prayer with Almighty God for 
bis success. Said David to Goliath, " Thou coinest to 
me with a sword, a spear, and a shield ; but I come to 
thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the 
armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied." 

We venture to say that the great mass of our sol- 
diery thought not so much of sending death to others as 
of their belief that then, if never before, they were serv- 



14 

ing God and bheir country, and were willing to die for 
the good cause, if need be. 

The true soldier is not a boaster. Saving and ex- 
cepting the few great leaders, lie well knows that he was 
one among two and a quarter millions, only one, yet 
proud to l»e counted there. When all was over, Dr. 
Bushnell said, on an occasion similar to this, "The heroes 
of the war are the dead men." True, but there were 
other heroes than either dead or living soldiers. Remem- 
ber the mothers and wives. While to the soldiers some 
days and weeks were as holidays, to the beloved at 
home nearly all days were days of battle, and every hour 
carried the possibility of sorrowful tidings. Remember 
such as the Massachusetts mother losing all her live sons: 
to whom Abraham Lincoln wrote of the "solemn pride 
that must be hers to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon 
the altar of freedom." 

Remember the little army of nurses who gave many 
lives, with a courage not surpassed on the field. 

Remember those whose work at home was indis- 
pensable and who had faith. In 1864 Grant said the 
Union would be saved if the North stood firm. The 
army sometimes looked as anxiously northward as south- 
ward. Remember the farmers and mechanics who could 
not go ; who sent sous and brothers, staying at home to 
maintain families; sending cheer and comfort to their 
boys in the field ; voting as seemed best to them, but 
always at heart voting for the Union. Remember our 
Legislators, who ordered army after army, and debt after 
debt, with a grand audacity, a splendid faith in Heaven 
and the people, until 1864 saw the Union with the great- 



15 

est army the world ever saw, near a million and a quar- 
ter of men, the best armed, equipped, clothed, fed, paid 
— and pensioned — the world ever saw. 

Forget not the true Union men of the border and 
Southern States, who stood by Union and Liberty, while 
neighbor was arrayed against neighbor, brother against 
brother, son against father; where the soldier often 
heard that his fields were ravaged, his home burned, his 
family houseless, and on furlough he could only visit 
them by stealth. What had we of New England to suf- 
fer by the side of these our comrades of the South ? Re- 
member among them the black man. Remember our 
comrades of foreign birth who were "with us from Sumter 
to the end, and those who came from foreign lands to 
join us. 

The New Testament, nowhere reflecting upon the 
profession of the soldier, and full of the metaphors that 
interchange easily between the campaigns of the evangel- 
ist and the warrior, gives us a charming story of a 
Roman captain, a pagan, engaged in the ungrateful work 
of enforcing the dominion of Rome over the conquered 
Hebrew^s. He had a servant who was dear unto him, 
and who was sick and ready to die. The generous sol- 
dier, having heard of one Jesus wdio was the friend of 
sorrow and suffering, and did great wonders in healing 
men, sent to Him certain elders of the Jews beseeching 
him to come and heal the servant. The Scripture pro- 
ceeds to say : 

" And when they came to Jesus they besought him instant- 
ly, saying, ' That he was worthy for whom he should do this, 
for he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue.' " 



16 

Here was a broad and liberal, as well as wealthy, 
soldier, possibly not a strong believer in tlie gods of 
Rome and Greece, but still less likely to believe in a 
gospel Prom Judea, and yet lie gave liberally to the 
alien race over whom he was on guard. 

" Then Jesus went with them, and when He was now not 
far from the house, the centurion sent friends to Him, saying 
unto Him: 'Lord, trouble not thyself, for I am not worthy that 
thou shouldst enter under my roof ; wherefore, neither thought 
I myself worthy to come unto thee, but say in a word, and my 
servant shall be healed.' 

" ' For I also am a man set under authority, having under me 
soldiers, and I say unto one, ' Go,' and he goeth ; and to another, 
< Come,' and he cometh ; and to my servant, ' Do this,' and he 
doetli it.' 

" When Jesus heard these things he marvelled at him, and 
turned about and said unto the people that followed him : ' I say 
unto you, I have not found such faith, no, not in Israel.' 

Thus kindly did the Divine Master look upon the 
pagan captain : "a soldier and a gentleman " of Rome. 

Mr. President : I heartily congratulate Utica upon 
this noble testimonial for the dead. Let us prefer to 
believe that their spirits are permitted to witness this in- 
spiring scene. In the dreary days of toil, in the idle 
hours of waiting camp life, in the dread moment of 
supreme trial, ever and anon, there came to the young 
soldier the question, "What are they thinking of me 
at home? 11 It flushed his cheek, brightened his eyes, 
brightened his sorrow, and raised his courage. " If we 
go home victors, how glorious it will be : if we fall, they 
will surely remember us." 

But monuments are not for the dead alone. Justice 



to ourselves and a wise provision of future trials require 
them. They say to the young: "This, and more too, 
shall be done for all who so love their flag and their 
country." 

Forget not the wonderful time when millions were 
uplifted by the great call, many to suffer labor, sorrow 
and pain and death for something outside of, above and 
beyond themselves, joining the noble army of martyrs. 
Raise a monument in every town, where it shall meet the 
eye of the multitude for centuries to come, forever 
telling the story of the great salvation of free govern- 
ment. Call children to it and tell them the tale, fully 
and truly — the causes and reasons, and issues and 
results. Let the skillful sculptor and painter, and the 
cunning engraver, set forth the countless romances and 
nobilities of the long straggle. Let the poet, orator, and 
historian perpetuate the significance of that demonstra- 
tion of the wisdom, power, justice, liberty, and truth of 
the republic. 

Perhaps you have heard idle and wicked hopes and 
prophecies that the memories of the war will pass away. 
Never! Never! God have mercy upon a people that 
could forget or desire to forget! With "malice toward 
none and charity for all, 1 ' remembering that those who 
were wrong are to be personally judged by the light they 
had, and their cause by the light posterity will have, the 
grandeur of the struggle and the majesty of the conclu- 
sion will remain in the minds of all the world. While 
the individual names of all, save a noble few of the lead- 
ers, will grow dim in the misty and distant past, the 
splendor of their valor will blend with the purple and 
gold of your sunrise and sunset for ever and ever. 



18 

Only a few words more. Assisting upon many 
similar occasions, I have made it my custom, as a most 
worthy part ot an appropriate liturgy, to read, at the close, 
the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, delivered at the 
dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg, twenty-eight 
years ago. Standing upon Cemetery Hill, before him the 
panorama of hill and valley, magnificent in three days of 
awful battle, and now superlatively beautiful and holy in 
the sunshine of peace, he declared a vow and a covenant 
that we renew to-day. He said : 

" Four-score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth 
upon this continent a new Nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedi- 
cated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

" Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can 
long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. 
We have come to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting 
place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might 
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

k4 But .in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot conse- 
crate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and 
dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our 
power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long 
remember what we say here, but it can never forget what 
they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated 
here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly 
carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead 
we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave 
the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve 
that these dead shall not have died in vain — that the nation 
shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the 
government of the people, by the people, and for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth. " 



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